Wealth

ARTICLES ABOUT WEALTH BY DATE - PAGE 4

LONDON (Reuters) - Swiss asset manager Pictet said on Tuesday it would expand its wealth management operations in London and hire between five and 10 bankers over the coming months. Pictet, which managed 265 billion pounds ($440.84 billion) worth of assets at the end of December, said London's large contingent of high net worth individuals was a key reason for the expansion. "The UK, and London in particular, is exceptionally well-suited to the needs of the ultra-wealthy," said Heinrich Adami, group managing director at Pictet, in a statement.

TORONTO (Reuters) - An aging workforce and looming regulatory change are driving stiff competition between Canada's top wealth managers to recruit new advisers, a costly and arduous process that makes finding the right fit crucial for both sides. With the average age of advisers at full-service investment companies nearing 50 and compliance demands rising, top-tier firms say the next few years may bring the stiffest competition yet as advisers and employers jockey to find a permanent match.

DUBAI (Reuters) - HSBC has appointed Khalid Elgibaly, formerly the chief executive of Standard Chartered in Pakistan, as head of retail banking and wealth management in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the bank said on Thursday. Elgibaly, who had taken up the Pakistan CEO position at Standard Chartered just last month, succeeds Francesca McDonagh, who moved to HSBC UK in January as head of retail banking and wealth management. Previously, Elgibaly, who comes from Egypt, was head of consumer banking for the UAE and the Middle East at Standard Chartered.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The most startling part of Washington's sanctions on Russian businessmen loyal to President Vladimir Putin may be a single sentence that contains an explosive allegation: that Putin himself profits from the world's No. 4 oil trading company, Gunvor. Among the people the United States sanctioned on Thursday as part of its drive to put pressure on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine was businessman Gennady Timchenko, a long-time acquaintance of Putin and, until this week, co-owner of Geneva-based Gunvor, which trades nearly 3 percent of the world's oil. In announcing the sanctions, the Treasury Department went a step further, adding a single sentence that hits squarely at one of the most controversial topics that Putin has faced in 13 years as the Kremlin ruler and head of the government.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto-Dominion Bank hopes to expand its U.S. wealth management business, targeting a million people with at least $100,000 in liquid assets who already are customers of its growing U.S. retail bank, said a senior executive of Canada's second-largest lender. Banks globally are battling to win both high-net worth clients, typically defined as those with at least $1 million in investable assets. Investors with at least $100,000 in assets are referred to as the "mass affluent.

HURDAL, Norway (Reuters) - Norway should not dig too deeply into its $850-billion sovereign wealth fund in the coming budget because this could overheat the economy and erode recent competitiveness gains, Prime Minister Erna Solberg told Reuters on Monday. Her government, composed of the center-right Conservatives and the more radical right-wing Progress Party, begins today negotiations over next year's budget, the first by the coalition since winning elections in September. Both parties are keen to put their stamp on the document.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. household net worth jumped to a new high at the end of last year, as the value of real estate and share holdings rose and bank accounts swelled. The Federal Reserve said on Thursday net worth increased 3.8 percent to $80.66 trillion in the fourth quarter, eclipsing a previous record high. The value of households' property, consumer goods, bank deposits and stocks all increased in the quarter, with share portfolios jumping 10.5 percent and real estate up 2.1 percent.

By James Saft March 6 (Reuters) - Americans are richer than ever and increasingly willing to take on a bit of extra debt and yet the overall atmosphere, and the economic recovery, are surprisingly flat. That's because the rise in wealth is highly concentrated, consumer debt is often going towards maintaining living standards in the absence of adequate income and, perhaps most importantly, businesses are simply not investing, very likely because they have a keen grasp of the first two points.

By James Saft March 5 (Reuters) - There are two main ways to get paid as a value investor: one is by avoiding the mistakes of your peers, the other is by making some mistakes of your own. Avoiding other people's mistakes is all about buying stocks which are cheap but solid and letting the dividends pile up and compound. Buy quality companies which are cheap and you, by definition, miss out on Pets.com, or, dare I say it, Facebook. In a very real sense, and I'll explain later, by doing this you are generating a stream of returns based on other money managers' fear of losing their jobs.

LONDON, March 5 (Reuters) - The world's super rich are turning from luxury mansions to hotels and office blocks, as they hunt for bigger property deals to preserve their growing fortunes which hit a combined $20 trillion in 2013, data showed on Wednesday. The move into commercial property comes as wealth levels rebound after the financial crisis and home values in London and Monaco soar, prompting the rich to look for riskier investments that offer higher returns than gold or bonds.